Took a wee trip to Chicago this weekend for my birthday. John and Stephen and I set off for a wee 10-mile jaunt through the snowy forest preserve, where we were joined by 20 deer (who may have outnumbered the people) and my extra chin.

Dashing through the snow.

We also dined (and drank, of course) at the inimitable Fernando’s, and I took some photos of Michael’s vintage Steinway. Played it, too! (Click to enlarge.)

Foodgeeks of the world take note: kitchen physics is fun! So Laurel’s wee cooking blog features the versatile clafoutis – traditionally made as a dessert with cherries, it’s sort of like a Dutch Baby or German pancake with stuff in it. Laurel makes savory ones (check out her Leek and Bacon version – delish!) and I have been following her lead. The first two I made were radically different – one was undulating and Dutch Baby-esque, while the other was flat and flan-like – and I wondered at the cause. Today I performed a wee experiment with different pans, and presto!

The clafoutis on the left was made in a slope-sided glass pie plate. The one on the right in a straight-sided dark cake pan. Formal versus rustic? Convention versus drama?

Oh, I’ve gone and done it. I’ve set myself up with a Twitter account! Yes, it’s true, for all of those inane little bits of myself that I just long to share with all of you but which don’t merit a whole blog post – there’s Twitter. Unfamiliar, oh ye of greater than twenty years on this earth? Twitter is a free service which suggests you answer the question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less. You can text from your phone or use a web browser and update the entire world on what you’re doing at that moment. I think this is interesting coming from:

People with exciting jobs that take them to nifty places and who post entries like “standing at the foot of the tower of pisa watching them drop the ceremonial water balloon.”

People who do stuff you can’t quite believe is happening. I quote from (I kid you not) Lance Armstrong’s post of this morning, “Got the kids off to school. About to eat breakfast then 5-6 hours on the bike.”

People you wish were really your friends. Like Stephen Fry, who posted this picture of his chair from the set of Bones yesterday. “Ooh the glamour. http://twitpic.com/1f7go

And perhaps, people who have mothers who worry.

I am none of these people. But you can still follow me on Twitter! It’s sort of a “What did Hamlet eat for breakfast” kind of thing. It will last until I have amassed scores of avid followers that I simply must update to please, and I throw myself into the lake because the pressure has become too great, OR until I’ve given up hoping that anyone will care. Either way, YOU can be there to see it happen!

And, hey, if you’re one of those people for whom writing a letter (I know, archaic) or email has just gotten to be too much of a burden, then you can open your own Twitter account and send random updates throughout your life. And I will follow you (that’s Twitterspeak) and know that you have read a poem, or scored pepper bacon on sale, or taken a cool photograph…and I will be happy in the knowledge.